SPOTLIGHT: OBAMA POLL

Poll: Obama's winning coalition may be fraying

January 14, 2010|By Peter Nicholas, Tribune Newspapers

WASHINGTON — One year into his presidency, Barack Obama appears to voters as a garden-variety Democrat -- not the post-partisan figure who attracted droves of independent voters in his successful 2008 presidential bid, a new poll shows.

A Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday showed the broad coalition is disintegrating.

His supporters have come to resemble those of former Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

"The notion of a post-partisan presidency that the campaign generated had some appeal last year," Brown said.

"Many of those independents -- many of these white men and political moderates who voted for Obama -- they peeled off," he said. "So if you look at the coalition, where it's strong now is traditionally where Democrats have always been strong: racial minorities, white women and political liberals. But that's a coalition that didn't get Al Gore or John Kerry over the top."

The poll showed Americans are evenly split, at 45 percent each, on whether Obama's first year was a success or failure.